RENAME-SIMPLE(1)

NAME
rename-simple - clean filenames to lowercase, ASCII-safe slugs

SYNOPSIS
rename-simple [OPTIONS] [DIR]

DESCRIPTION
rename-simple renames files and/or directories in DIR (default: current directory) by normalising accented characters, replacing spaces and special characters with hyphens, and lowercasing everything.

The transformation pipeline is:

1.  Transliterate accented and non-ASCII characters to their ASCII equivalents (e.g. é -> e, ß -> ss, Æ -> ae).

2.  Replace all remaining special characters with a hyphen (-).

3.  Collapse consecutive hyphens into a single hyphen.

4.  Clean underscore/hyphen boundaries (_- and -_ become _).

5.  Collapse consecutive underscores.

6.  Strip leading and trailing hyphens and underscores.

Compound extensions (.tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz, .tar.zst) are preserved. Hidden files (names starting with a dot) are never modified.

By default the program produces no output on success. Use -v/--verbose to display details.

OPTIONS

-f  Rename files only (default: files and directories).

-d  Rename directories only (default: files and directories).

-r, --recursive
    Process subdirectories recursively.

-v, --verbose
    Show details of each rename operation and a summary.

-n, --dry-run
    Show what would be renamed without actually renaming any entry.

-h, --help
    Print a help message and exit.

EXIT STATUS

0   All entries were renamed successfully (or no entries needed renaming).

1   An error occurred (invalid arguments, I/O error, etc.).

EXAMPLES

Rename files in the current directory
    rename-simple

Rename files in a specific directory with verbose output
    rename-simple -v ~/Downloads

Preview what would be renamed without touching anything
    rename-simple -n -v

Recursively rename only files (skip directories)
    rename-simple -f -r

Rename directories only
    rename-simple -d

AUTHOR
Written by darkone-linux.

REPORTING BUGS
GitHub: https://github.com/darkone-linux/rename-simple (https://github.com/darkone-linux/rename-simple)

COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2026 darkone-linux. License MIT: <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

SEE ALSO
mv(1), rename(1)